Glitch in the matrix
Too bad almost every serious dramatic beat was undercut by some kind of bug, ranging from a UI crowded by notifications and crosshairs failing to disappear, to full-on scripting errors halting otherwise rad action scenes. What should've been my favorite main quest venture, a thrilling infiltration mission set in a crowded public event, was ruined by two broken elevators. I had to reload a few times to get them working.
The most absurd bug might've been when some children spawned in front of a timed shooting contest I entered with a friendly nomad. I couldn't shoot anywhere near the children because my weapon automatically raised, so I just sat there and let the timer run out as my buddy talked shit.
More often the bugs are audiovisual tics, like the sound of a car loudly peeling out wailing on during a long drive as passenger with an NPC, a character passing through solid elevator doors, or a copy of Johnny's cigarette hanging in the air in front of me while he smokes another and goes on about what a coward I am. They're the kind of thing I can squint through here and there, but there wasn't a single quest in which something wacky didn't happen.
Even the final scene in the closing moments of my ending featured cars spawning in the direct path of an NPC-driven vehicle. A nice, poignant drive and conversation seasoned with a head-on collision visible only to me. Even after installing the Day 0 patch, Night City still feels like it's barely holding together at times. The good news is that all this stuff can be fixed, but it also means the ideal Cyberpunk 2077 is delayed again, in spirit.
Fallout: New Vegas was a mess at launch too, and smoothed out over time. Red Dead Redemption 2 was plagued by unforeseen issues with certain GPU and CPU combinations at the start. All good now. Bugs are a guarantee in games this big, but after 8 years in development and multiple delays, I hoped Cyberpunk 2077 would go down much smoother than this.